The Solaris group is a forum where peers share technical expertise, solve problems, and discuss issues related to the Solaris operating system, including OS-related malfunctions, security issues, and network performance.

Stuck in ALOM (No Prompt After Console -f)

Our server's root password has expired and currently does not allow direct root logins. Before, we can reset the password using the ALOM console.

But currently, we weren't able to do that because we can't get to the prompt. We can log into ALOM, and when we issue the 'console' or the 'console -f' command, we're stuck in 'Enter #. to return to ALOM'.

Please, I need your help. We can't reboot the server and/or have downtime.

Which Server model is it? Are you able to ping your server? If yes then
reset your service processor to get the console.
Try to reset alom, once you login into Alom,
execute the command to (resetsc) to reset, it won't effect your OS.

Hi,
This is what I can only see:
===============================
sc> console -f
Warning: User <admin> currently has write permission to this console and forcibly removing them will terminate any current write actions and all work will be lost. Would you like to continue? [y/n]y
Enter #. to return to ALOM.

===============================
I hit Enter a lot of times but still no output.

I have already tried using resetsc..

The root password has expired and what I need to do is to reset it using ALOM.

I can't restart the server because of the downtime that may affect us.

If password has expired you can ssh the server try with root login or any
other login then give su - or su
it will prompt for yours' old password and then you will be asked to enter
new password twice in silent mode if both of them matches you will be able
to reset the password do remember password complexity if any
best of luck

Which model of server is this? Newer ones ( t200o onward ) allow a graphical login through a browser to access the console.
The behaviour you are seeing sounds like a process already has the console open?
Is there a graphics card and keyboard in the server?
Do you have other working logins so you can examine the ps output to see if any process has
the console open?

1) Direct root access is disabled so I can't SSH then login as root
2) Can't SU to root successfully, It says ' Root password has expired. Use passwd(1) ...' - It does not prompt for any password change
3) I have tried resetting sc - sc > resetsc
4) The server is up. I can login using my own ID

By the way it happened to one of or Solaris servers with the same problem, but we were able to do 'console -f' and reset root password successfully. Now, our temporary solution is to enable direct root login while we're trying to figure out how we can turn off root password expiry permanently.

Thank you all for your replies and suggestions.. we really can't prioritize rebooting the server, cause its our production server which is affected.. Since we would like to try rebooting it, I think its better to ask our users regarding that option.

I got another question, If I modify the /etc/shadow file remove the values in the expiry field, will it remove the root password expiration permanently?

What kind of computer? I'm familiar with the SunFire series,
particularly the V210/v240 and similar.

No keyboard, so I would guess you're using a terminal (we generally use
HyperTerm on a WinXP laptop)?

When you have 'Enter #. to return to ALOM', press Enter. What prompt, if
any, appears?

If it's "OK", enter your boot command as appropriate to get in and fix
your root password (ie "boot -s" for single user).

If something else, Do what key-combination sends the equivalent of
Stop-A to the computer. On Windows laptops running HyperTerm, it's
Fn-Break or Cntrl-Fn-Break. Then you have an OK prompt and can proceed
as above.

On a side note, in the future, either change the password in time or set
it so that the root password does not expire. Avoid the problem...

"If something else, Do what key-combination sends the equivalent of
Stop-A to the computer. On Windows laptops running HyperTerm, it's
Fn-Break or Cntrl-Fn-Break. Then you have an OK prompt and can proceed "

This will stop the system running, I think you said earlier you couldn't reboot because of production ?

As far as I can tell, the model of computer is still unknown. What are
we talking about? Ditto flavor and version of Unix - what is in use? Is
the CDROM referenced the same operating system and version as what's on
the hard disk?

Ref Cntrl-C going to the OK prompt, that just means that was where it
was already. ALOM ignores Cntrl-C (at least it does on my V210's), but
OpenBoot (OK prompt) does not.

What's the hard disk setup? Is there any mirroring or RAID involving the
referenced disk? What's the rest of the error message that talks about
magic numbers. There's usually more to it than that.

You can try boot single user from the CDROM as you did before, then run
"fsck -f /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0" and retry the mount...